One of the most confusing moments during the Networking Europe Conference »NEURO«1 was when the demand to found a party was made during the final discussion. This demand arose from an almost intangible dissatisfaction with the present situation and, as a result, with the event itself. The participants were looking for other options for political activity than those of the previous days, which had not produced the expected enthusiasm. So: why not start up a party?

The call for a new party was surprising coming from the mouths of Net activists who only a few years ago wanted, in their »temporary autonomous zones«, to completely exclude the state and institutional politics. But this demand was not just confusing: it also intimated an important new step – even if this idea was to be understood more in a metaphorical sense.

As well as expressing latent dissatisfaction, the vague desire to found a party - i.e. to look for real-political instruments – confirms the precarious situation of the civil society as described by the American political scientist Michael Hardt in the Festival publication2: »This is not so say that the forms and structures of social exchange, participation, and domination that were identified in the concept of civil society have ceased entirely to exist, but rather that they have been displaced from the dominant position by a new configuration of apparatuses, deployments and structures«.3 But Hardt knows how to give his observations a positive turn without invoking the former constitution of the civil society: »This alternative community of social practices … will be the most potent challenge to the control of post-civil society«.4

So, according to Hardt, it is necessary to look for forms that replace the present vacuum. The resistance that forms owing to the lack of participative structures and the falling away of the social mechanisms of the civil society has become clearly visible in the past in a variety of ways.5 In Munich this could be clearly seen by the presence of old media like the Berlin radio project »reboot fin« and of the television activists from Candida TV, one of the over one hundred Italian telestreet projects. This reversion has not taken place for nostalgic reasons, however, but to make sure contemporary transformations in media politics do not go uncommented. What is at issue here is thus no longer the above-mentioned »temporary autonomous zones«, but the very concrete demand for change.

The projects from remote corners of the networked world were an interesting aspect at NEURO – projects that often manage even without the »Top Ten Open Source Tools«6 as listed in the Festival newspaper. At present, local reports such as those by the author and curator Keiko Sei about Burma or the photographer and media activist Shahidul Alam about Bangladesh simply say more about the status quo of the »digital divide«. For the imbalance that exists in the Western world between »tools« and alternative content was seldom so apparent as it is today. Who uses the platform »D-A-S-H Europe«7 that was launched at the beginning of NEURO? Doesn’t this mean the creation of simply another archive whose forum will peter out, like wastun.org8?

What is certain is that the omnipresence of the Internet has not asserted itself to the degree prognosticated as recently as 2001 by »digeratis« like Charles Leadbeater. The daily agenda in countries like Burma - where the Internet is still only accessible as a censured offline copy - and Bangladesh is dominated by entirely different questions: How can the Internet be used at all as a »tool«? How can the military censorship be circumvented? In other words, future events as well should be devoted clearly to the pragmatic implementation of the concepts that have dominated over the past few years: Realize social exchange and participation.

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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